Apple's A4 iPad chip could find a home in iPhones

From InfoWorld: Apple's A4 chip, being used in the iPad, could ultimately provide a speed boost to future versions of the company's iPhone, analysts said on Thursday.

Apple introduced on Wednesday the iPad handheld device, which has a 9.7-inch diagonal screen and is designed for browsing the Internet, playing games, reading e-books and viewing video content. The product fits somewhere between the iPhone and MacBook laptop, said Apple CEO Steve Jobs at a press event.

The iPad is powered by a chip called A4 that was designed in-house, Jobs said. The system-on-chip includes a processor that runs at 1GHz and a graphics core that is capable of displaying 720p high-definition video. The power-efficient chip can also provide 10 hours of battery life on active usage of the device.

The iPad shares many characteristics with the iPhone, so the A4 chip itself or its variants could ultimately make it to the iPhone, analysts said. Both use low-power chips and are designed to run the iPhone OS.

The A4 chip was designed for portable products, and modified chips based on the architecture are prime candidates to be used in new iPhone versions, said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64. A variant of the A4 chip could make iPhones much faster, he said.

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